


The Boy Who Shot Van Gogh

by ABonVivant



Category: Alternative History - Fandom, Art History - Fandom, Vincent van Gogh - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 18:06:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4797131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABonVivant/pseuds/ABonVivant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two boys come across the artist painting in a wheat field.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Boy Who Shot Van Gogh

The Boy Who Shot Van Gogh

The story was inspired by a conversation with friends. A mention of a new theory surrounding the artist Vincent Van Gogh's death caused us to fabricate a ridiculous alternative history. After a friend came up with this deliciously absurd title, I felt compelled to bring our bizarre riff to life. Enjoy!

***

The North of France. The boy associated the region with golden sunlight and yellow petals. It exuded a kind of vibrancy that his Mediterranean home lacked. Here, the sun gave the land some distance. Where he was from, it seemed to press into the landscape and from its close embrace burst a flattening kind of brightness. The colors of home, while luminous, lacked the warmth of France's wheat fields.

So he was struck by the stranger's painting, by its color. Standing in the midst of the wheat, the man in the straw hat had somehow managed to capture it, to bring its glow to the canvas. The boy drew closer, not hiding the naked intensity with which he gazed at the still unfinished painting.

When the boy turned to look at its artist, he saw the man's eyes lingering on his sketchbook.

"You draw, boy?" he asked.

"I do. Would you like to look, sir?" the boy replied, pride singeing his question. 

The man took the sketchbook. He flipped through page after page, many of them fine renderings of his trip in France. Sketches of his father painting, his older friend hunting, and of cows trudging along the country roads.

"These are good son, but your hand should be looser. Let the lines flow, have the courage to break away from what you see."

The boy, used to praise for a skill that many attested seemed beyond his years, took a strange offense to the man's criticism. His words inspired bitterness.

After handing back the sketchpad, the man turned to the boy's French friend.

"And you? Do you draw?"

" I hunt, sir." his friend said, with a smile.

"Show me. See that crow on the branch, there? Shoot it."

He missed.

"You need to work on keeping your hand steadier," the man chortled.

Feeling ignored by the two, the boy exclaimed he could make the shot. His irritation at both of them made him forget his inexperience.

Rifle in hand, he aimed at the crow. It flew off the branch. As he tried to follow its trajectory, he grew nervous. He closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger. 

The force knocked him over. The bird continued its flight. 

Disappointed, he lifted himself off the ground. It was only then that he realized his friend and the man were both standing still. He followed his friend's gaze to the growing stain of red on the man's shirt.

The man touched the wound, the red on his fingers had something of the same intensity as the colors on his canvas.

He smiled weakly.

"You both run along now."

With his permission, his friend began running down the road. The boy watched the man a little while longer, frightened of the trouble to come.

As though the man sensed this, he reassured him, "No worries boy, we sometimes miss our mark. Neither you nor your friend have anything to worry about. Please just leave me be."

Golden light shined on them, their shared instance was already falling into memory.

"Go."

The boy ran back toward the village, still fearful of what would happen next.

The boy had shot Van Gogh. 

And that boy... grew up to be Pablo Picasso. 

***

Pablo found himself amused at where his reveries had taken him.

During lulls in his work, he often looked over at his framed article about the great artist cutting off his ear. Such contemplation always stirred up a mix of admiration and a nagging feeling that he could never quite match the other artist's colors, their singular vibrancy. Turning back to his painting, he consoled himself with the thought that at least he would never have Van Gogh as a rival.

His hand flowed easily across the canvas.

***

Key references:

http://www.vanityfair.com/unchanged/2014/12/vincent-van-gogh-murder-mystery

"In Van Gogh: The Life, a 960-page book published in 2011, the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors claim that the artist had been shot, possibly accidentally, by a couple of boys and that he had decided to protect them by accepting the blame."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-03-14/suicide-van-gogh-s-ear-obsessed-teenage-picasso-review

"Picasso’s biographer, John Richardson, has written that Van Gogh meant more to Picasso than any other artist in his later years. He even got a copy of the newspaper report of Van Gogh’s ear-mutilation episode so he could frame it."


End file.
